There was more of pain than reproach in the words. Her voice was deep and very sad.
But Nick scarcely looked at her. He was pulling tufts of dried seaweed off the rock on which he leaned.
"My dear girl," he said, "how can you expect it?"
"Expect it!" she echoed. "I don't understand. What do you mean?"
He drew himself slowly to a sitting posture. "How can I be honest with you," he said, "when you are not honest with yourself?"
"What do you mean?" she said again.
He gave her an odd look. "You really want me to tell you?"
"Of course I do." She spoke sharply. The old scared feeling was awake within her, but she would not yield to it. Now or never would she read the enigma. She would know the truth, cost what it might.
"What I mean is this," said Nick. "You won't own it, of course, but you are cheating, and you are afraid to stop. There isn't one woman in ten thousand who has the pluck to throw down the cards when once she has begun to cheat. She goes on—as you will go on—to the end of her life, simply because she daren't do otherwise. You are out of the straight, Muriel. That's why everything is such a hideous failure. You are going to marry the wrong man, and you know it."
He looked up at her again for an instant as he said it. He had spoken with his usual shrewd decision, but there was no hint of excitement about him. He might have been discussing some matter of a purely impersonal nature.